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Evolution Makes No Sense on This Molecular Clock Problem

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Evolutionary thought did not begin nor end with Charles Darwin. To be sure Darwin was its most important exponent, but evolutionary thinking goes back centuries before 1859 when Darwin first published his book on evolution, and it continued to develop long after Darwin. For example, for all his theorizing Darwin had little idea how biological variation—a crucial, fundamental component of evolutionary theory—actually occurs. How do species change to begin with? About half a century later evolutionists constructed neoDarwinism which added to Darwin’s theory the idea that random genetic mutations provided the needed biological variation which occasionally hit upon improvements which would be preserved via natural selection. Indeed, according to evolution, whales, oak trees, and humans all must have been created by an incredibly long series of random mutations. The theory did not work very well for a number of reasons. For example, mutations don’t slowly add up to arrive at complex biological structures and mechanisms, and biological change is rapid and directed, not slow and random. Those are merely two of a great many false predictions generated by evolutionary theory. One of them is the concept of a molecular clock.  Read more

Comments
Mung:
Carpathian: ID is supposed to solve the problem of “finding” the “target”. Mung: Evolution is supposed to solve the problem of “finding” the “target”.
It is ID that claims the existence of a "target", not evolution. Ask kairosfocus what the S in CSI stands for. Evolution does not have a "target" to "find" since anything that survives to reproduce has implicitly been "accepted" by the environment.
Carpathian: This implies ID must know what the target actually is. Mung: This implies that your “weasel” program must know what the target is. Carpathian: Without guidance from an intelligent designer, the “built-in” guidance system cannot “identify” the “target”. Mung: Yes, your “weasel” program works not because it simulates “evolution” but because it was intelligently designed. We tried to tell you this. repeatedly.
A "weasel" program serves the same purpose as an oscilloscope. They are both used to investigate reality but are themselves not the devices under test. You don't seem to understand the difference between the map and the territory. Ask kairosfocus why a meter shouldn't be considered a part of the battery it is measuring. You could also ask a tailor why a measuring tape is not part of the suit he is making.Carpathian
June 28, 2015
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Axel, scottH, mike1962, ppolish, agree with your comments about the impacting work BA77 does here: Providing very interesting information in almost all the discussion threads. I don't know how he does that. Really impressive. BTW, you all may want to look at this reference to a very recent paper (note the highlighted text): https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/mystery-at-the-heart-of-life/#comment-569129Dionisio
June 17, 2015
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Yes. It's great to see you getting some of the plaudits you've so richly deserved, BA77. A new twist on God doesn't make mistakes in his handiwork! You're a divine work of art in yourself, over and above your 'common' humanity. A veritable light unto the scientific world, and to the rest of humanityAxel
June 17, 2015
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Stabilizing selection, LOL Sometimes selection wants to stabilize. Sometimes it wants to be directional. Sometimes it wants to be disruptive. Stuff happens. It's all about fitness. Fitness measurements, LOL
After 35 years and 600 generations, accelerated by artificial selection: We conclude that, at least for life history characters such as development time, unconditionally advantageous alleles rarely arise, are associated with small net fitness gains or cannot fix because selection coefficients change over time. Burke, Dunham et al, “Genome-wide analysis of a long-term evolution experiment with Drosophila,” Nature 467, 587–590 (30 September 2010); doi:10.1038/nature09352.
Selection coefficients change over time? No problem - we'll just assume that fitness criteria remains constant and when an organism reaches a 'local optimum' then stabilizing selection kicks in. The organism needs to develop legs, wings, eyes, digestive and reproductive systems first in order to reach 'local optimum', of course, but once it got there, all it needs is "stabilizing". Need to develop some echo-location functions? Moving into the water and need fins, a change of diet and a blow-hole? Disruptive selection is what you're looking for -- and it will be there, as long as you're not in a local optimum. In that case, you're out of luck.
Stabilizing selection (not the same thing as negative selection[1][2]) is a type of natural selection in which genetic diversity decreases and the population mean stabilizes on a particular trait value. This is thought to be the most common mechanism of action for natural selection because most traits do not appear to change drastically over time. [3] Stabilizing selection commonly uses negative selection (a.k.a. purifying selection) to select against extreme values of the character ... Because most traits change little over time, stabilizing selection is thought to be the most common type of selection in most populations. [6] However, a meta-analysis of studies that measured selection in the wild failed to find an overall trend for stabilizing selection. [7] The reason can be that methods for detecting stabilizing selection are complex. They can involve studying the changes that causes natural selection in the mean and variance of the trait, or measuring fitness for a range of different phenotypes under natural conditions and examining the relationship between these fitness measurements and the trait value, but analysis and interpretation of the results is not straightforward.
It's the most common method of selection we can't find a trend in the wild? Analysis and interpretation of the statistics is not straightforward? Come on - run a few correlations.Silver Asiatic
June 17, 2015
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Well thanks guys. It sure is a change from angrily being called an IDiot. Verse and Music:
Colossians 2:2-4 ,, unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, that they may know the mystery of God, even Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden. This I say, that no one may delude you with persuasiveness of speech. Jamie Grace - Beautiful Day (Official Lyric Video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPy0ctqMwE0
bornagain77
June 16, 2015
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There’s always a tradeoff involved.
Just another reason why variation is limited and universal common descent out of reach.Virgil Cain
June 16, 2015
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Me too, ScottH re BA77. He has helped me "unlearn" a bunch too (I was raised as a Darwinist). The Darwin Delusion;)ppolish
June 16, 2015
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BA77 @43,49,50 You're kicking some serious butt.mike1962
June 16, 2015
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BA77 you are a machine! I learn a lot from your links. Keep it up!scottH
June 16, 2015
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It is impossible for Darwinian processes to reach 'optimum', whether it be local optimum, global optimum, or whatever optimum:
Study demonstrates evolutionary ‘fitness’ not the most important determinant of success – February 7, 2014 – with illustration Excerpt: An illustration of the possible mutations available to an RNA molecule. The blue lines represent mutations that will not change its function (phenotype), the grey are mutations to an alternative phenotype with slightly higher fitness and the red are the ‘fittest’ mutations. As there are so few possible mutations resulting in the fittest phenotype in red, the odds of this mutation are a mere 0.15%. The odds for the slightly fitter mutation in grey are 6.7% and so this is far more likely to fix, and thus to be found and survive, even though it is much less fit than the red phenotype.,,, By modelling populations over long timescales, the study showed that the ‘fitness’ of their traits was not the most important determinant of success. Instead, the most genetically available mutations dominated the changes in traits. The researchers found that the ‘fittest’ simply did not have time to be found, or to fix in the population over evolutionary timescales. http://phys.org/news/2014-02-evolutionary-important-success.html
This following headline sums the preceding finding up very nicely:
Fittest Can’t Survive If They Never Arrive – February 7, 2014 http://crev.info/2014/02/fittest-cant-survive-if-they-never-arrive/
William Bialek: More Perfect Than We Imagined - March 23, 2013 Excerpt: photoreceptor cells that carpet the retinal tissue of the eye and respond to light, are not just good or great or phabulous at their job. They are not merely exceptionally impressive by the standards of biology, with whatever slop and wiggle room the animate category implies. Photoreceptors operate at the outermost boundary allowed by the laws of physics, which means they are as good as they can be, period. Each one is designed to detect and respond to single photons of light — the smallest possible packages in which light comes wrapped. “Light is quantized, and you can’t count half a photon,” said William Bialek, a professor of physics and integrative genomics at Princeton University. “This is as far as it goes.” … Scientists have identified and mathematically anatomized an array of cases where optimization has left its fastidious mark, among them;,, the precision response in a fruit fly embryo to contouring molecules that help distinguish tail from head;,,, In each instance, biophysicists have calculated, the system couldn’t get faster, more sensitive or more efficient without first relocating to an alternate universe with alternate physical constants. http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2013/03/william-bialek-more-perfect-than-we.htmlbornagain77
June 16, 2015
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"There’s always a tradeoff involved." The 'tradeoffs' are actually design constraints that expose, once again, Darwinian explanations as fantasy
“This is the issue I have with neo-Darwinists: They teach that what is generating novelty is the accumulation of random mutations in DNA, in a direction set by natural selection. If you want bigger eggs, you keep selecting the hens that are laying the biggest eggs, and you get bigger and bigger eggs. But you also get hens with defective feathers and wobbly legs. Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn’t create…. (Quoted in “Discover Interview: Lynn Margulis Says She’s Not Controversial, She’s Right,” Discover Magazine, p. 68 (April, 2011).) GMO Bulls Now A Reality - January 11, 2014 Excerpt: "Due to genetic selection and experiments, the Belgian Blue is a humongous species of Bull, packed with muscles and meat. ...There is a gene that regulates the growth of muscles in cattle, These cows have been selectively bred from animals that contain a copy of this gene that doesn't work, as a result their muscles grow far larger than normal [They have a deletion mutation that prevents control of muscular growth = loss of genetic material]. ..Their uninhibited muscle growth presents a lot of health hazards, calves can develop enlarged tongues and stiff legs which make it difficult for them to eat and move, leading to an early and painful death." http://naturalhealthwarriors.com/gmo-bulls-now-a-reality/ K´necting The Dots: Modeling Functional Integration In Biological Systems - June 11, 2010 Excerpt: “If an engineer modifies the length of the piston rods in an internal combustion engine, but does not modify the crankshaft accordingly, the engine won’t start. Similarly, processes of development are so tightly integrated temporally and spatially that one change early in development will require a host of other coordinated changes in separate but functionally interrelated developmental processes downstream” (1) https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/k%C2%B4necting-the-dots-modeling-functional-integration-in-biological-systems/ THE PROBLEM OF CONSTRAINTS ON VARIATION, FROM DARWIN TO THE PRESENT - IGOR POPOV - 2009 Excerpt: There are limitations to variability. "The real number of variations is lesser than expected one. There are no blue-eyed Drosophila, no viviparous birds or turtles, no hexapod mammals, etc. Such observations provoke non-Darwinian evolutionary concepts. Darwin tried rather unsuccessfully to solve the problem of the contradictions between his model of random variability and the existence of constraints. He tried to hide this complication citing abundant facts on other phenomena. The authors of the modern versions of Darwinism followed this strategy, allowing the question to persist. ...However, he was forced to admit some cases where creating anything humans may wish for was impossible. For example, when the English farmers decided to get cows with thick hams, they soon abandoned this attempt since they perished too frequently during delivery. Evidently such cases provoked an idea on the limitations to variability... The problem of the constraints on variation was not solved neither within the framework of the proper Darwin’s theory, nor within the framework of modern Darwinism." http://www.ludusvitalis.org/textos/32/32-11_popov.pdf
bornagain77
June 16, 2015
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Directly. You mutate them or collect natural mutants and measure their fitness. You can also use population genetics to detect historical and recent stabilizing selection, which is near universal in protein coding genes.wd400
June 16, 2015
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So how do we test the claim that some species is on a local optima or that some species is or is not under stabilizing selection?Mung
June 16, 2015
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Eric Anderson: Wouldn’t it be better for the cheetah if she could run a bit faster, or leap a bit higher, or see a bit farther? There's always a tradeoff involved. The cheetah is a powerful predator, but if she misses very many opportunities, she won't have enough energy to breed or care for offspring. Eric Anderson: Yet Zachriel now tells us that most biological systems are “at local optimums,” not likely to tolerate further changes. So which is it? Being on a local peak means having to descend to reach a higher peak. Stabilizing selection is a very common type of selection.Zachriel
June 16, 2015
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"Not By Chance" was published in 1997, meaning guided mutations is not my version. And it only makes sense that if life was intelligently designed that the bulk of the change would be part and parcel of that intelligent design, ie guided.Virgil Cain
June 16, 2015
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Carpathian:
Just where in the cell is this “specifier of targets” found?
Everywhere. Try building a living cell without the proper software.
How does DNA or any other biological construction look into the future and intelligently determine a “specified target”?
Why do you ask such leading questions that tend to expose your strawman version? And why do you refuse to respond to my points that explain my claim?Virgil Cain
June 16, 2015
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I have another question for neo-Darwinists, (i.e. Zach, wd400, carp, etc..), about random mutations as they pertain to neo-Darwinism. How can random mutations to DNA possibly be the creative fodder for neo-Darwinian evolution when an organism's body plan is not even reducible to random mutations to DNA in the first place as is presupposed in neo-Darwinism?
Response to John Wise - October 2010 Excerpt: A technique called "saturation mutagenesis"1,2 has been used to produce every possible developmental mutation in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster),3,4,5 roundworms (Caenorhabditis elegans),6,7 and zebrafish (Danio rerio),8,9,10 and the same technique is now being applied to mice (Mus musculus).11,12 None of the evidence from these and numerous other studies of developmental mutations supports the neo-Darwinian dogma that DNA mutations can lead to new organs or body plans--because none of the observed developmental mutations benefit the organism. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/10/response_to_john_wise038811.html 'No matter what we do to a fruit fly embryo there are only three possible outcomes, a normal fruit fly, a defective fruit fly, or a dead fruit fly. What we never see is primary speciation much less macro-evolution' – Jonathan Wells Darwin's Theory - Fruit Flies and Morphology - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZJTIwRY0bs Peer-Reviewed Paper: Development Needs Ontogenetic Information that Cannot Arise from Neo-Darwinian Mechanisms - Casey Luskin - June 2, 2014 Excerpt: ,,,"the vast majority of proteins in eukaryotes are not completely specified by DNA sequences.",,, Jonathan Wells http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/06/peer-reviewed_p_2086201.html
I went to Wells's paper and found on page 11:
Membrane Patterns Carry Ontogenetic Information That Is Specified Independently of DNA - 2014 - Jonathan Wells Excerpt Page 11: Most proteins are not completely specified by DNA sequences: The central dogma (which here includes Crick’s sequence hypothesis) claims that (1) DNA specifies RNA and (2) RNA specifies protein. Yet this claim fails at both steps, because most RNAs are not uniquely specified by DNA sequences, and many proteins are not uniquely specified by RNAs—either in their amino acid sequences or in their final folded forms. After transcription, RNAs from many eukaryotic genes undergo alternative splicing. Recent studies estimate that transcripts from approximately 95% of multi-exon human genes are spliced in more than one way [289?291]. By intervening between transcription and translation, alternative splicing generates RNAs with sequences that differ from DNA sequences [292]. The differences are functionally significant.,,, Page 12 In addition to alternative splicing, many metazoan transcripts undergo RNA editing, which can (a) modify cytidine to uridine; (b) modify adenosine to inosine; or (c) insert additional nucleotides. Several recent analyses have demonstrated extensive RNA editing in the human transcriptome [303?305]. The editing of an mRNA often alters the amino acid sequence of the encoded protein so that it differs from the sequence predicted by the DNA [306,307]. References: 289. Wang ET, Sandberg R, Luo S, Khrebtukova I, Zhang L, et al. (2008) Alternative isoform regulation in human tissue transcriptomes. Nature 456:470-476. doi: 10.1038/nature07509 290. Pan Q, Shai O, Lee LJ, Frey BJ, Blencowe BJ (2008) Deep surveying of alternative splicing complexity in the human transcriptome by high-throughput sequencing. Nat Genet 40:1413-1415. doi: 10.1038/ng.259 291. Barash Y, Calarco JA, Gao W, Pan Q, Wang X, et al. (2010) Deciphering the splicing code. Nature 465:53-59. doi: 10.1038/nature09000 292. Kornblihtt AR, Schor IE, Alló M, Dujardin G, Petrillo E, et al. (2013) Alternative splicing: A pivotal step between eukaryotic transcription and translation. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 14:153-165. doi: 10.1038/nrm3525 303. Peng Z, Cheng Y, Tan BC, Kang L, Tian Z, et al. (2012) Comprehensive analysis of RNA-Seq data reveals extensive RNA editing in a human transcriptome. Nat Biotechnol 30:253-260. doi: 10.1038/nbt.2122 304. Bahn JH, Lee JH, Li G, Greer C, Peng G, et al. (2012) Accurate identification of A-to-I RNA editing in human by transcriptome sequencing. Genome Res 22:142-150. doi: 10.1101/gr.124107.111 305. Sakurai M, Ueda H, Yano T, Okada S, Terajima H (2014) A biochemical landscape of A-to-I RNA editing in the human brain transcriptome. Genome Res (January 9, 2014). doi: 10.1101/gr.162537.113 306. Brennicke A, Marchfelder A, Binder S (1999) RNA editing. FEMS Microbiol Rev 23:297-316. doi: 10.1111/j.1574-6976.1999.tb00401.x 307. Eisenberg E, Li JB, Levanon EY (2010) Sequence based identification of RNA editing sites. RNA Biol 7:248-252. doi: 10.4161/rna.7.2.11565 http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2014.2/BIO-C.2014.2
In fact, completely contrary to neo-Darwinian thought, it's the organism controlling the DNA, not the DNA controlling the organism:
Ask an Embryologist: Genomic Mosaicism - Jonathan Wells - February 23, 2015 Excerpt: humans have a "few thousand" different cell types. Here is my simple question: Does the DNA sequence in one cell type differ from the sequence in another cell type in the same person?,,, The simple answer is: We now know that there is considerable variation in DNA sequences among tissues, and even among cells in the same tissue. It's called genomic mosaicism. In the early days of developmental genetics, some people thought that parts of the embryo became different from each other because they acquired different pieces of the DNA from the fertilized egg. That theory was abandoned,,, ,,,(then) "genomic equivalence" -- the idea that all the cells of an organism (with a few exceptions, such as cells of the immune system) contain the same DNA -- became the accepted view. I taught genomic equivalence for many years. A few years ago, however, everything changed. With the development of more sophisticated techniques and the sampling of more tissues and cells, it became clear that genetic mosaicism is common. I now know as an embryologist,,,Tissues and cells, as they differentiate, modify their DNA to suit their needs. It's the organism controlling the DNA, not the DNA controlling the organism. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/02/ask_an_embryolo093851.html
Dr. Meyer puts the insurmountable 'body plan' problem for neo-Darwinists as such:
‘Now one more problem as far as the generation of information. It turns out that you don’t only need information to build genes and proteins, it turns out to build Body-Plans you need higher levels of information; Higher order assembly instructions. DNA codes for the building of proteins, but proteins must be arranged into distinctive circuitry to form distinctive cell types. Cell types have to be arranged into tissues. Tissues have to be arranged into organs. Organs and tissues must be specifically arranged to generate whole new Body-Plans, distinctive arrangements of those body parts. We now know that DNA alone is not responsible for those higher orders of organization. DNA codes for proteins, but by itself it does not insure that proteins, cell types, tissues, organs, will all be arranged in the body. And what that means is that the Body-Plan morphogenesis, as it is called, depends upon information that is not encoded on DNA. Which means you can mutate DNA indefinitely. 80 million years, 100 million years, til the cows come home. It doesn’t matter, because in the best case you are just going to find a new protein some place out there in that vast combinatorial sequence space. You are not, by mutating DNA alone, going to generate higher order structures that are necessary to building a body plan. So what we can conclude from that is that the neo-Darwinian mechanism is grossly inadequate to explain the origin of information necessary to build new genes and proteins, and it is also grossly inadequate to explain the origination of novel biological form.’ Stephen Meyer - (excerpt taken from Meyer/Sternberg vs. Shermer/Prothero debate - 2009) - Functional Proteins and Information for Body Plans - video https://vimeo.com/91322260
Dr. Meyer's preceding comment elucidates a huge question that is never honestly addressed by our resident neo-Darwinists. Namely, even if neo-Darwinian evolution were to somehow, miraculously, stumble onto a functional protein, how in blue blazes does the neo-Darwinism figure out what to do with the new protein? Stephen L. Talbott puts the problem as such:
HOW BIOLOGISTS LOST SIGHT OF THE MEANING OF LIFE — AND ARE NOW STARING IT IN THE FACE - Stephen L. Talbott - May 2012 Excerpt: “If you think air traffic controllers have a tough job guiding planes into major airports or across a crowded continental airspace, consider the challenge facing a human cell trying to position its proteins”. A given cell, he notes, may make more than 10,000 different proteins, and typically contains more than a billion protein molecules at any one time. “Somehow a cell must get all its proteins to their correct destinations — and equally important, keep these molecules out of the wrong places”. And further: “It’s almost as if every mRNA [an intermediate between a gene and a corresponding protein] coming out of the nucleus knows where it’s going” (Travis 2011),,, Further, the billion protein molecules in a cell are virtually all capable of interacting with each other to one degree or another; they are subject to getting misfolded or “all balled up with one another”; they are critically modified through the attachment or detachment of molecular subunits, often in rapid order and with immediate implications for changing function; they can wind up inside large-capacity “transport vehicles” headed in any number of directions; they can be sidetracked by diverse processes of degradation and recycling... and so on without end. Yet the coherence of the whole is maintained. The question is indeed, then, “How does the organism meaningfully dispose of all its molecules, getting them to the right places and into the right interactions?” The same sort of question can be asked of cells, for example in the growing embryo, where literal streams of cells are flowing to their appointed places, differentiating themselves into different types as they go, and adjusting themselves to all sorts of unpredictable perturbations — even to the degree of responding appropriately when a lab technician excises a clump of them from one location in a young embryo and puts them in another, where they may proceed to adapt themselves in an entirely different and proper way to the new environment. It is hard to quibble with the immediate impression that form (which is more idea-like than thing-like) is primary, and the material particulars subsidiary. Two systems biologists, one from the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Germany and one from Harvard Medical School, frame one part of the problem this way: "The human body is formed by trillions of individual cells. These cells work together with remarkable precision, first forming an adult organism out of a single fertilized egg, and then keeping the organism alive and functional for decades. To achieve this precision, one would assume that each individual cell reacts in a reliable, reproducible way to a given input, faithfully executing the required task. However, a growing number of studies investigating cellular processes on the level of single cells revealed large heterogeneity even among genetically identical cells of the same cell type. (Loewer and Lahav 2011)",,, And then we hear that all this meaningful activity is, somehow, meaningless or a product of meaninglessness. This, I believe, is the real issue troubling the majority of the American populace when they are asked about their belief in evolution. They see one thing and then are told, more or less directly, that they are really seeing its denial. Yet no one has ever explained to them how you get meaning from meaninglessness — a difficult enough task once you realize that we cannot articulate any knowledge of the world at all except in the language of meaning.,,, http://www.netfuture.org/2012/May1012_184.html#2
Of supplemental note, where chimps and humans differ by 'orders of magnitude' is in the regulatory networks
"Where (chimps and humans) really differ, and they differ by orders of magnitude, is in the genomic architecture outside the protein coding regions. They are vastly, vastly, different.,, The structural, the organization, the regulatory sequences, the hierarchy for how things are organized and used are vastly different between a chimpanzee and a human being in their genomes." Raymond Bohlin (per Richard Sternberg) Richard Sternberg PhD – podcast – On Human Origins: Is Our Genome Full of Junk DNA? Part 2 http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2014/11/on-human-origins-is-our-genome-full-of-junk-dna-pt-2/
Yet random mutations to regulatory networks are 'always catastrophically bad'
A Listener's Guide to the Meyer-Marshall Debate: Focus on the Origin of Information Question -Casey Luskin - December 4, 2013 Excerpt: "There is always an observable consequence if a dGRN (developmental gene regulatory network) subcircuit is interrupted. Since these consequences are always catastrophically bad, flexibility is minimal, and since the subcircuits are all interconnected, the whole network partakes of the quality that there is only one way for things to work. And indeed the embryos of each species develop in only one way." - Eric Davidson http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/12/a_listeners_gui079811.html
Thus, where neo-Darwinists most need plasticity in the genome to be viable as a theory, (i.e. developmental Gene Regulatory Networks), is the place where mutations are found to be 'always catastrophically bad'. Yet, it is exactly in this area of the genome (i.e. regulatory networks) where substantial, ‘orders of magnitude’, differences are found between even supposedly closely related species (even chimps and humans). Needless to say, this is the exact opposite finding for what Darwinism would have predicted for what should have been found in the genome. If neo-Darwinism were a normal science, instead of being the creation myth for atheists, this finding, by all rights, should have falsified neo-Darwinism by itself.bornagain77
June 16, 2015
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Carpathian: ID is supposed to solve the problem of “finding” the “target”. Evolution is supposed to solve the problem of “finding” the “target”. Carpathian: This implies ID must know what the target actually is. This implies that your "weasel" program must know what the target is. Carpathian: Without guidance from an intelligent designer, the “built-in” guidance system cannot “identify” the “target”. Yes, your "weasel" program works not because it simulates "evolution" but because it was intelligently designed. We tried to tell you this. repeatedly.Mung
June 16, 2015
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Virgil Cain:
The problem with your version of ID is it leaves out the intelligence that “specifies” the “target”. The intelligence is in the program- see spell check.
Just where in the cell is this "specifier of targets" found? How does DNA or any other biological construction look into the future and intelligently determine a "specified target"?Carpathian
June 16, 2015
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Carpathian, Just admit that you don't know anything about ID and you are making it up as you go.
Without guidance from an intelligent designer, the “built-in” guidance system cannot “identify” the “target”.
And yet evolutionary and genetic algorithms find the solution without any guidance from the designer other than the program.
The problem with your version of ID is it leaves out the intelligence that “specifies” the “target”.
The intelligence is in the program- see spell check.Virgil Cain
June 16, 2015
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Virgil Cain, ID is supposed to solve the problem of "finding" the "target". This implies ID must know what the target actually is. Without guidance from an intelligent designer, the "built-in" guidance system cannot "identify" the "target". The problem with your version of ID is it leaves out the intelligence that "specifies" the "target".Carpathian
June 16, 2015
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Carpathian:
What he has done here is retracted from full ID to something closer to Darwinism.
How do you figure? "Not By Chance" was published in 1997- that means your misunderstanding is inexcusable.Virgil Cain
June 16, 2015
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wd400:
I’d give up Carpathian. This is one of Joe/Virgil’s weird and unshakeable beliefs. The fact it leaves his version of ID completely untestable doesn’t seem to worry him.
He does sound like Joe! What he has done here is retracted from full ID to something closer to Darwinism.Carpathian
June 16, 2015
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wd400:
The fact it leaves his version of ID completely untestable doesn’t seem to worry him.
Unguided evolution is completely untestable and that doesn't seem to worry evolutionists. We can and have modeled intelligently designed evolution with evolutionary and genetic algorithms. We cannot model unguided evolution producing something like a bacterial flagellum.Virgil Cain
June 16, 2015
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11:18 AM
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Carpathian:
1) How can something intelligent not have a goal?
That doesn't mean a designer is guiding the mutations. Dr Spetner has posited a "non-random evolutionary hypothesis" with "built-in responses to environmental cues" as the main mechanism. BUILT-IN.
That is the whole point of ID, that there is a “target” which needs to be “designed” since a non-ID solution is improbable.
Unguided evolution is impotent. That is why something else is required to explain the evidence and the evidence fits the design criteria. ID doesn’t require that any mutations be guided by a designer. Spell check doesn't require a programmer be there to change the incorrect spelling. Did you read that part or do you not understand it?Virgil Cain
June 16, 2015
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11:14 AM
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I'd give up Carpathian. This is one of Joe/Virgil's weird and unshakeable beliefs. The fact it leaves his version of ID completely untestable doesn't seem to worry him.wd400
June 16, 2015
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Virgil Cain:
If the intelligent designer has a goal, he would be guiding his mutations toward it. You are confused and ignorant of ID.
1) How can something intelligent not have a goal? That is the whole point of ID, that there is a "target" which needs to be "designed" since a non-ID solution is improbable. 2) If the intelligent designer does not have a goal, why do his designs work? 3) If a goal isn't required, how can non-ID be improbable? If there is no "target", there is no solution that is "improbable". Behe suggests IC is goal-oriented since the designs he mentions are irreducible, i.e. every part must be there. This points to a goal.Carpathian
June 16, 2015
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11:05 AM
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Carpathian: Evolution is more concerned about populations than it is about individuals. I certainly never felt any concern of evolution about me, but I also don't see why evolution would be concerned about humans in general either.Mung
June 16, 2015
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10:46 AM
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Carpathian:
The flaws we see in the “design” of organisms points to non-ID evolution as being the cause.
That is what we have been saying for years. You cannot expect flaws to add up to something useful.Virgil Cain
June 16, 2015
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Carpathisn:
I expect that any mutation that is guided by an ID designer would not be wasted.
ID doesn't require that any mutations be guided by a designer. Spellcheck doesn't require a programmer be there to change the incorrect spelling.
If the intelligent designer has a goal, he would be guiding his mutations toward it.
You are confused and ignorant of ID.
A change that is not goal-directed however, is exactly what you would expect with non-ID evolution since it does not have a “target” it is working toward.
Which is exactly why it cannot produce the types of changes universal common descent requires.Virgil Cain
June 16, 2015
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